Fatal Blast Levels Russian Soldiers' Housing

Chechen Separatists, Angry Smugglers At Center Of Speculation

MOSCOW — A building housing Russian soldiers and their families near Chechnya collapsed Saturday in a powerful bomb blast, killing as many as 13 people.

Rescue workers heard cries for help coming from under the debris of the nine-story building. Eleven people were missing and feared trapped.

Officials said the explosion likely was caused by one or more bombs in the basement of the building in Kaspyisk, a town in Dagestan, a southern Russian republic neighboring Chechnya.

Up to 130 people, most of them Russian border guard officers and their families, lived in the apartment house. The blast destroyed 41 of the 75 apartments, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Russian national security chief Ivan Rybkin blamed the blast on forces opposed to the peace agreements in separatist Chechnya. Other officials suspected smugglers angered by border guards' efforts to shut down their trade.

The ITAR-Tass and Interfax news agencies, quoting local officials from the Federal Security Service, said as many as 13 died.

Interfax said other government agencies in Dagestan were reporting that up to nine people were killed.

In Moscow, the Ministry for Emergency Situations confirmed seven deaths and seven hospitalizations.

Marina Rykhlina, a ministry spokeswoman, said the blast was in the middle of the three-wing building. "The entire section collapsed," she said.

President Boris Yeltsin, recovering from heart surgery, sent his condolences to relatives of the dead, and the government said it would set up a commission under a deputy prime minister, Oleg Lobov, to investigate the causes of the blast.

"I vouch that all necessary measures will be taken to uncover the reasons," Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin said.

Gen. Viktor Ruzlyavev, commander of border troops in the Caucasus region, said at least two bombs containing up to 55 pounds of TNT were planted in the basement.

"This blast is aimed against the Russian border guards, against their presence in Dagestan," Ruzlyayev told Interfax.

A border guard spokesman, Col. Mikhail Andreyev, said investigators had not ruled out a Chechen connection but were looking into other possibilities, including mafia involvement.

He said border guards repeatedly have faced threats from smugglers. Dagestan is on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

Viktor Ilyukhin, the head of parliament's security committee, blamed the blast on Chechen separatists. He said it showed that Chechen leaders cannot control the situation in the republic that fought a 21-month war for independence with Russia.